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Once a continent reopens, you'll find 100% in the hands of the enemy. If you take one base, that's likely to be lost again shortly after.

What treshold(s) or condition(s) needs to be reached before it can be locked again by the empire that locked it before?

i.e. Is it unconditionally reopened for a certain period of time allowing an invasion to gain momentum?

Does it require being pushed back to such an degree, you lose "dominance" over the continent?

Is a lock immediate after the last base is captured?

Or do you need to hold all warpgate borders for a certain period of time and can this lock be broken or prevented by a well timed counter-attack?

Will players be rewarded with (temporary) extra exp or resources for succesful invasions or last stand defense to seduce them to fight till the end?

Can all three/four continents be locked at the same time?

If so, what happens next? Is there a reward?

If there's a reward, is this so lucrative it would encourage players to go fourth empire and create a giant overpopulation to make it happen? (Even at the last minute.)

If you want to assign such a reward, I would suggest you demand a character has been on that empire for at least three hours before the final lock occured, this way, you would discourage bailing to the winning team at the last moment.

From what I can tell, players aren't physically thrown out of the continent? Or does it work like the caves in PS1, where you can't respawn anymore once the cave is closed (not locked, in PS1 locked is simply capturing everything and getting the cave benefits)?

From what I understand, you have to simply capture everything, rather than just the main bases?

Asking, because you might discourage fighting at certain points where players give up.

I would also suggest that if all continents are locked, the following occurs:

The first two captured continents reopen, one for each zero-based empire.

The other two captured continents reopen slightly later. At that time, the third empire is allowed back on the first two continents. This to concentrate the fighting on both sides in two-ways. Otherwise, the winning empire finds itself fighting on 8 fronts at once.

If there's a large login queue for an empire, the warpgates one the already opened continents open early.

All zero-based players get full resources.

All zero-based players get a temporary resource and exp boost (for invading)

I would like to remind you that the original "Continent locking" had the following effects:

Continent lock:
- You would "lock" a continent by taking ALL the linked bases on the other side of the warpgates of that continent, thereby denying a link.
- All minor bases (towers) switched to the winner's side once all major bases were captured.
- Players weren't physically locked out of the continent.
- You could still create a new link by neutralising a base (draining it from NTU)

Continent closed:
- For certain events, empires were literally prevented from entering a continent (they would be allowed to invade only one specific home continent of a single enemy who would often concentrate their forces on either fight due to lacking manpower for both).
- As a consequence of the above, players would start ghosthacking the world if they won one of the home continent fights, since they couldn't go elsewhere.
- Players had to wait and warpgate camp till the last continent would open. This would sometimes result in a complete world domination by the winner of the home cont defense that the defender gave up on.

Cave lock:
- All cave modules actived for all linked surface bases.

Cave closed:
- No more respawns possible, whether you have a base or AMS, just revives from medics.
- Could still continue to fight and capture links if you still had a single remaining base. You could win through attrition (killing the enemies and prevent them from being revived).

The system as proposed now - as I understand it anyway - reminds me an awful lot of a combination between the closed continent and closed cave. So that's a bit different from a "locked" continent.

As stated before, the "lock" was capturing all access points on the other side of the warpgate (even a hack and therefore denying the link, would suffice to stop or stall an invasion, sometimes resulting in a counter-invasion!).

I hope everyone is aware of the differences between the Locked Continent definition between PlanetSide 1 and 2.

Hockey for the longest time had something like this. It was called the goalie's crease. An opposing player wasn't allowed to score while in the crease. It made it so the goalie had a buffer zone of not being interfered with. The No Deploy Zone is also similar to a modern offsides. It prevents you from goal hanging, which is similar to placing a sunderer directly on the capture point.

No clue how hockey is played but again, it's a simple rule of reciprocity. Defense is allowed to put a Sunderer next to a capture point, yes? But as I've said before, the official reason is equidistant spawn for both defense and offense. A more reasonable NDZ would be 10-20 feet at most. The current NDZ is HUGE to afford that distance parity.

As for the hockey thing. I've seen this hockey video before. What if I implement a PS2-style no-sneaking-behind-the-goal-post-like-a-ninja-zone. That wild move would not ever happen ever. I read the Youtube comments and they are going crazy about this move.

Dropping a huge offensive no-skating zone circle around that goalpost would severely reduce alot of gameplay as well, I'd say.

Exaggerated or not, it adds very little to the game vs the amount of cheap and cheese for players who like to mine the pads. A variety of cheese is still cheese.

I'm confused by this statement. It's just normal pvp gameplay, which is player to player interaction, which has risk and reward. If a player sees it, they shoot it (and the resource is wasted). If they don't, they blow up if they don't have mineguard.

Most pads are 5 feet away from the console. In a middle of a raging fight. you mean to tell me, 5-20 guys with line-of-sight won't spot it? Because that's the crux of it. I'm talking about mining it in a middle of a fight, especially at the crucial vehicle pad next to the Tech Plant SCU. I really doubt there's someone going around, randomly mining empty bases just to make alot of newbies quit.

Also, how is dropping an AV mine on a vehicle pad different from dropping AI mine on a stair or a doorway? The way you characterize newbies, means they will just die off these mines and they will quit as well.

And I sincerely doubt you would call dropping AI mine on a stair, door or an elevator pad cheesy too. Because if it is, then as all slippery slopes go, the AI mines will be next to drop off the precipice.

The reason most noobs left was because of performance until OMFG. After that, it's usually one of these: not being able to find a fight, or dying a lot. Some players have no idea how they're dying and the feedback the game gave was very sparse and difficult to understand. That's one of the reasons we added the killcam. Personally, I wanted to go further with the killcam, but what we have is still pretty good.

What about now? What's the biggest reason why newbies are leaving after OMFG?

I'm pretty sure Higby said kill-cam was added to stop newbs from being farmed or something to that effect, especially by Snipers. That's why imo, it's better off to just remove their stealth ability. Stealths are for infiltrators. Having triple advantage of ranged, stealth and 1-shot kill is broken.

There's no "we keep hands off gameplay." Everything we do has some hands on or design direction. For the best games out there, it's really hard to notice the designer's hand in the game, because it all flows so smoothly. There are some rough edges where you can see the designer's hand, but I don't agree with your solutions to fix that roughness.

Let me explain what I meant by the phrase "hands off". It simply meant let players interact with players, and let that interaction be the pvp gameplay. NDZ is not Player vs. Player interaction. It's Player vs. Dev interaction.

If I try to park on the NDZ:
- Am I interacting with other players? No
- Am I fighting other players? No
- What gameplay is created? None
- Who is preventing me from parking? The Devs
- Then who am I fighting? The Devs
- Who is winning? The Devs
- Are the Devs a faction? No
- Is there a gameplay born out of this Player-Dev NDZ interaction? None

I could do the same comparison with the Vehicle pads, Jumppads and Death Cam. We're not talking about safezone areas like the Warpgate or Spawn rooms. It's in the middle of the battlefield.

Who determines what Continent will be locked? Player vs Player interactions. Who determines who parks in the NDZ? Developers, not Player vs. Player interation. Do players have any input to at least turn it off via generator? None. There is literally no player input, interaction or gameplay with this system. It's not like a Generator mechanic, which has pvp and gameplay implications.

Give us tools instead that effect the same NDZ using Player vs. Player interaction (which is gameplay).

Example: I suggested the Sunderer Jammer as alternative even before NDZ was released.

- Offense deploys AMS Sunderer.
- Defense deploys Sunderer Jammer and prevents AMS Sundy from spawning player.
- That interaction has the same effect but is a Player vs. Player interaction (which is pvp is called Gameplay).
- Offense can move the AMS Sundy from the Sundy Jammer's AOE or just blow it up.
- Defense can defend the Sundy jammer or attack the AMS Sundy or both.
- All of these Player vs. Player gameplay interaction. The Devs ideally would have just given us tool fight each other, while removing their "hands on" fingerprint in-game, hence "hands off".

On a different note this highlights again how much the game is twisting and turning because production on new continents is so slow or wasn't done prior to launch.

The version of continent locking wanted is very simple but requires several continents than we have now - in their absence we get this above and WDS too, both of which are more complicated and less satisfying.

I would say (with tongue in my cheek) that all of this should be part of a 'lessons learnt' review - you should have the important stuff in before launch because sure as shootin' it will be harder afterwards.

Why would nubs stick around after getting mopped by vets? Um, because they're not pussies? That's the simple answer. Maybe you can't relate. That's how many of the dev decisions in this game seem to be made.

No clue how hockey is played but again, it's a simple rule of reciprocity. Defense is allowed to put a Sunderer next to a capture point, yes? But as I've said before, the official reason is equidistant spawn for both defense and offense. A more reasonable NDZ would be 10-20 feet at most. The current NDZ is HUGE to afford that distance parity.

As for the hockey thing. I've seen this hockey video before. What if I implement a PS2-style no-sneaking-behind-the-goal-post-like-a-ninja-zone. That wild move would not ever happen ever. I read the Youtube comments and they are going crazy about this move.

Dropping a huge offensive no-skating zone circle around that goalpost would severely reduce alot of gameplay as well, I'd say.

I'm confused by this statement. It's just normal pvp gameplay, which is player to player interaction, which has risk and reward. If a player sees it, they shoot it (and the resource is wasted). If they don't, they blow up if they don't have mineguard.

Most pads are 5 feet away from the console. In a middle of a raging fight. you mean to tell me, 5-20 guys with line-of-sight won't spot it? Because that's the crux of it. I'm talking about mining it in a middle of a fight, especially at the crucial vehicle pad next to the Tech Plant SCU. I really doubt there's someone going around, randomly mining empty bases just to make alot of newbies quit.

Also, how is dropping an AV mine on a vehicle pad different from dropping AI mine on a stair or a doorway? The way you characterize newbies, means they will just die off these mines and they will quit as well.

And I sincerely doubt you would call dropping AI mine on a stair, door or an elevator pad cheesy too. Because if it is, then as all slippery slopes go, the AI mines will be next to drop off the precipice.

What about now? What's the biggest reason why newbies are leaving after OMFG?

I'm pretty sure Higby said kill-cam was added to stop newbs from being farmed or something to that effect, especially by Snipers. That's why imo, it's better off to just remove their stealth ability. Stealths are for infiltrators. Having triple advantage of ranged, stealth and 1-shot kill is broken.

Let me explain what I meant by the phrase "hands off". It simply meant let players interact with players, and let that interaction be the pvp gameplay. NDZ is not Player vs. Player interaction. It's Player vs. Dev interaction.

If I try to park on the NDZ:
- Am I interacting with other players? No
- Am I fighting other players? No
- What gameplay is created? None
- Who is preventing me from parking? The Devs
- Then who am I fighting? The Devs
- Who is winning? The Devs
- Are the Devs a faction? No
- Is there a gameplay born out of this Player-Dev NDZ interaction? None

I could do the same comparison with the Vehicle pads, Jumppads and Death Cam. We're not talking about safezone areas like the Warpgate or Spawn rooms. It's in the middle of the battlefield.

Who determines what Continent will be locked? Player vs Player interactions. Who determines who parks in the NDZ? Developers, not Player vs. Player interation. Do players have any input to at least turn it off via generator? None. There is literally no player input, interaction or gameplay with this system. It's not like a Generator mechanic, which has pvp and gameplay implications.

Give us tools instead that effect the same NDZ using Player vs. Player interaction (which is gameplay).

Example: I suggested the Sunderer Jammer as alternative even before NDZ was released.

- Offense deploys AMS Sunderer.
- Defense deploys Sunderer Jammer and prevents AMS Sundy from spawning player.
- That interaction has the same effect but is a Player vs. Player interaction (which is pvp is called Gameplay).
- Offense can move the AMS Sundy from the Sundy Jammer's AOE or just blow it up.
- Defense can defend the Sundy jammer or attack the AMS Sundy or both.
- All of these Player vs. Player gameplay interaction. The Devs ideally would have just given us tool fight each other, while removing their "hands on" fingerprint in-game, hence "hands off".

You put a lot of content in your posts, and again, I disagree with a lot of it from a game design point of view.

You say No deploy zones is fighting the devs, and I disagree. Why, in soccer or hockey, am I not allowed to just stand next to the goalie and goalhang the whole game? The reason I can't is the offsides rule. Am I fighting the rule makers of FIFA or the NHL? No, I am playing a balanced game that gives people a sporting chance to win. If we let any strategy go, we start getting cheap no-skill tactics like that.

I actually don't like Anti-Personnel mines either, and think they're pretty cheap too. I'd love to remove them from the game, or make them give more feedback so people have a better chance of not dying to them. But the difference is vehicles have a large cooldown and resource cost. If you mine a pad, they essentially waste resources, where you can just respawn as a player. And people can't learn to play vehicles in combat if they never get a chance to spawn.

If for a moment I agreed we should take stealth away from the infiltrator, the community would go berserk. People are invested in the game, and we can't just take a primary feature away from a class. Not to mention at the range they do most of their killing, the stealth wouldn't have a huge effect anyway.

The sunderer jammer is a neat idea, but it's not something we need right now. There are more pressing issues.

Why would nubs stick around after getting mopped by vets? Um, because they're not pussies? That's the simple answer. Maybe you can't relate. That's how many of the dev decisions in this game seem to be made.

What got me so addicted to online gaming was getting my ass handed to me in Counterstrike.

I'm really glad you're not a game designer. Your fratboy "alpha male" bullshit would never go anywhere in a game development environment. Counterstrike is renown for having one of the shittiest gaming communities to have ever existed, and the only reason it's survived is because its lobbies have a relatively small amount of players in them; you don't need very many players to get a Counterstrike match going, and only a hundred or so people per server is enough to ensure that you continuously get matches. By comparison, you need THOUSANDS of players *per server* AT ALL TIMES in order for Planetside 2 to function. It needs a larger community than ANY other game that has ever existed in order to function. So it can't afford to have this macho-man dudebro mentality of "fuck da noobs the MLG pro-players will stay!" It has to cater to "casuals" because whether you like it or not, "casual" gamers vastly outnumber "no-lifers" like you and I.

So cool, you want the game to cater to the "hardcore master race alpha" nerd? Alright, then what you basically want is for the game to be empty, with only a couple hundred playing it per server. Kudos.

Why would nubs stick around after getting mopped by vets? Um, because they're not pussies? That's the simple answer. Maybe you can't relate. That's how many of the dev decisions in this game seem to be made.